Camera Jumps When Player Runs

Unity Engine
,
1

I’m trying to make a basic 3rd person camera collider so my camera doesn’t clip through walls/floors. I have the basics working, but when make the character run the camera jumps around unexpectedly (something it didn’t do before I tried to add a collider). Any advice for a newbie like me? The code for my camera controller is below.

public class ThirdPersonCamera : MonoBehaviour
{
    //in inspector, drag a cam look target into this field (cam will circle around it)
    public Transform cameraTarget;
    public bool lockCursor;

    public float mouseSensitivity = 10f;
    public float distanceFromCameraTarget = 1f;

    float upDownRotation;
    float leftRightRotation;
   
    //so that camera will not tumble over the top of the character
    public Vector2 upDownRotationMinMax = new Vector2(-40, 85);
    public float cameraRotationSmoothTime = .07f;
    Vector3 rotationSmoothVelocity, currentRotation;

    //Zoom
    float currentZoom = 5f;
    float minZoom = .5f;
    float maxZoom = 10f;
    float zoomSpeed = 4f;

    private void Start()
    {
        //lock the cursor to the center of the screen
        if(lockCursor)
        {
            Cursor.lockState = CursorLockMode.Locked;
            Cursor.visible = false;
        }
    }

    // Update is called once per frame
    private void Update()
    {
        currentZoom -= Input.GetAxis("Mouse ScrollWheel") * zoomSpeed;
        currentZoom = Mathf.Clamp(currentZoom, minZoom, maxZoom);
    }

    // Late update because target position will be set before this is called
    void LateUpdate()
    {
        //moving mouse up and down will look up and down, and left right is left right
        leftRightRotation += Input.GetAxis("Mouse X") * mouseSensitivity;
        upDownRotation -= Input.GetAxis("Mouse Y") * mouseSensitivity;
        //no camera tumbling, clamp between 2 degrees
        upDownRotation = Mathf.Clamp(upDownRotation, upDownRotationMinMax.x, upDownRotationMinMax.y);

        currentRotation = Vector3.SmoothDamp(currentRotation, new Vector3(upDownRotation, leftRightRotation), ref rotationSmoothVelocity, cameraRotationSmoothTime);
        transform.eulerAngles = currentRotation;

        // move the camera
        transform.position = cameraTarget.position - transform.forward * distanceFromCameraTarget * currentZoom;

        //send out a raycast
        RaycastHit hit = new RaycastHit();
        //if something collides, transform camera to hit location
        if (Physics.Linecast(cameraTarget.position, transform.position, out hit))
        {
            Debug.DrawRay(hit.point, Vector3.left, Color.red);
            transform.position = new Vector3(hit.point.x, hit.point.y, hit.point.z);
            Debug.Log(transform.position);
        }
    }
}
2

Hi,

Have you tried to just let the camera Lerp, instead of jumping to the new hit position, when the ray from player to the camera hit something in between?

3

No, I didn’t know that was a thing I could do. I will try that, thanks!

4

I figured out what my issue was and wanted to put it down in case anyone else ran into something similar:

So I am using a REAL basic collider code

        //CAMERA COLLISION
        //send out a raycast
        RaycastHit hit = new RaycastHit();
        //if something collides, transform camera to hit location
        //ignore the layermask "ignore Collision" which is attached to objects with large collider trigger areas
        if (Physics.Linecast(cameraTarget.position, transform.position, out hit, ~collisionIgnore))
        {
            Debug.Log("Collision!");
            transform.position = new Vector3(hit.point.x, hit.point.y, hit.point.z);
        }

the magic part of this code i was originally missing was that ~collisionIgnore portion in the linecast (it is a public Layermask). I had collider triggers around objects in my scene that went out 2 units, and this raycast was still interacting with them even though they were only for interaction trigger purposes. By putting the trigger collider on a separate object and marking that object on some sort of “Ignore Raycast” layer, i avoided this weird skipping issue :slight_smile: